Stronger Woman
by Rin0rourke
Summary: After a rejection that could have been handled better Sam is left with emotions she doesn't quite know how to deal with, and Star gets caught in the backlash. Femslash, heavily mentions of slash


"Do you love me?" The question had been hovering inside her for a while now, like a heavy blunt object, ready to bludgeon their fragile relationship the moment it was brought up.

"Hm?" was the reply, and she was almost ready to repeat it, but it had taken so much courage just to whisper it into the soft covers.

"Nothing, just thinking out loud." They returned to watching the movie, cuddled up under the blanket in their pajamas. Her head pillowed on soft breasts that rose and fell in time with her companions breathing.

Sam moved her arm to get at the popcorn, removing the warmth that had settled across Star's shoulders, she watched the pale wrist peak out from beneath the long purple pajama sleeves, wanting to kiss the exposed skin and feel the softness with her lips. She'd done it before. It was her favorite spot, the inner wrist, but Sam was eating and she wouldn't care to be interrupted for a simple romantic gesture.

Not from Star anyway.

Since the very beginning she had always wondered about the exact nature of this tryst they were caught up in. It wasn't some silly fling, or a secret romance. In fact, they were quite open about it at school, sitting in each other's laps, kissing in the hallway, albeit not as open as Danny and Dash sometimes got for all the embarrassment they felt afterwords.

Sam, in a bitter tone, once said that if they balanced their relationship out more they wouldn't have these overflowing physical needs.

Star sometimes wondered what it would be like to need someone that much, so much that at one point or another it doesn't matter who looks or listens, you just pin them to something and kiss, wildly, madly, with groping hands and probing tongues. She couldn't imagine that kind of electricity, that kind of tension.

It didn't exist for her.

Sam always kissed closed mouthed, said she didn't like the thought of someone's tongue against hers, said it sounded gross. And the kisses were always brief, because there wasn't much you could do with a closed mouth. Star had once tried to kiss her other places, on the neck, on the chin, on the temple. Even with just the lips Sam didn't like it.

She could only get away with the wrist, so it was really a good thing it was her favorite place.

The Goth girl probably didn't see it as intimate, but Star thought it was the most beautiful part of a body, and Sam had such slender, fragile looking wrists. Almost like hers, but not as tanned, or with the faint scar of her childhood when she had fallen from the jungle gym and landed on it, the bone sticking out.

She could hardly use her left hand, and she had been born left handed.

Sam didn't know that, Sam didn't know anything. She didn't want to know.

A hand traced down and cupped her butt; she closed her eyes at the contact and pressed her cheek against the small breasts beneath her. Sam loved to cuddle, to touch and feel and hold. She was such an independent thinker, a strong woman, but she needed physical contact the way some people need to lock their doors in a gated community.

For personal security.

All because of the rejection.

"I'm so tired." Sam breathed and rolled her head back against the armrest with a groan, her hands now both grabbing at Star, adjusting their positions, making Star move her ear away from the sound of a beating heart.

They were at Star's house, Sam never invited Star over to hers. She didn't invite star in, to her home, her life, her heart.

A hand cupped Sam's breast, feeling a flutter beneath kneading fingers. It was the closest she could get to that beating organ.

Sam drew her face up, kissed her lips, those soft innocent kisses. It sometimes made Star feel guilty for being the first to do this, the first to touch her like this, when she so obviously wanted someone else.

She had called out his name, that first time; Star never was allowed that sweet delusion that she had maybe loved her, wanted her. She had always been a replacement.

Not even a rebound. Always a substitute.

And it wasn't like Star was the only one who knew, everybody could see it. How Sam would watch those two, see the jealousy in her eyes, would see them holding each other or kissing or fighting. How she would turn to star, grab her and kiss her, like she was trying to forget, like she was imagining a different world, a different reality.

This morning Dash and his little boyfriend had had a fight, a big one, that ended with them coming to blows, Lancer had to separate them, Sam had been so happy. Hadn't even tried to hide it. Hadn't tried to pretend she wanted them back together.

She didn't fake her opinions, she didn't lie about her anger, and she didn't hide when she thought she was right.

Too bad for her the day had ended with them back together. In fact Lancer had had to break it up again, because someone's, Star didn't have the gossipy details of just who's yet, but someone's pants had been undone and the hallway was about to get x-rated.

Knowing the hold the two guys had over the Vice Principal they had probably been sent to the faculty bathroom instead of reported and suspended.

Not like they would have made it home, from what she had heard. Probably the bushes, maybe to Dash's car. But Sam had been there, by Danny's locker when Dash had come up. Sam had told her in her tense snippy voice about how Dash had rammed Danny face first into the lockers and began sucking on his neck, giving the teen a bloody nose and a hickey, how instead of getting angry Danny had gotten aroused. She said she walked off when her friend had turned around to wrap his arms around the jocks neck.

Star wished she had stayed.

Because maybe Sam would have seen the love, however masochistic, they had for each other. Maybe, just maybe, she'd give up on Danny, stop hoping his relationship would fail, stop wishing the two misery, and perhaps she'd find she truly loved someone else.

Perhaps that someone else would be Star.

Sam's fingers slid up, pushing up the fabric of her too short nightshirt and sliding beneath the waistband of her boy-shorts. They curved around her bottom for a while, kneading and stroking the way Star did her breasts. It was a wonderful feeling, those hands on her. They were so much smaller that Kwan's had been, and her nails so much sharper. Star spread her legs wider, settling herself over the body beneath her more securely, snuggling her face into Sam's throat, her eyes squeezed shut and her pulse pounding in desire.

Desire for this horrible, unique woman.

Sensual agony tingled through her like adrenaline after a near fall from a pyramid. The softness of a soft breast in her hand beckoned her and she sank her head, bending her back to descend . She wound her hands up to cup the brunette's shoulders as her lips found the stiff nipple through the filmy linen of her top and sucked.

Sam had always loved her breasts being touched, Star didn't care for it, didn't find the pleasure in her own being fondled, which again was good because her companion never touched her there, she had always favored the neck and, of course, the wrists, but Sam didn't like opened mouthed kisses, anywhere, least of all in an intimate place. At the first warmth of a mouth she kicked out, throwing the blonde to the carpet.

"What the hell?" She snarled, stepping out from beneath the covers and off the couch. Star just lay on her back staring at the ceiling and swallowed hard. It hurt, she could feel tears clogging in her throat and tried again to swallow past them, but it hurt so much to know this rejection.

"Leave." She whispered hoarsely and caught from the corner of her vision an irate, and confused, Goth. She turned from her, curling around herself slightly, but was pleased her next words sounded as cold and unyielding as the wall between them she could never quite climb. "Just go away."

To Sam she looked uncaring, which is what she wanted to appear as. Danny's rejection, when she had confessed her feelings to him after he confided his confusing attraction for his bully, had left her scarred and fragile, easily broken. Star had been the one to come across her at the school, had seen her tears and asked what was wrong.

Sam had thrown herself at her, embraced her like a long forgotten imaginary friend returned from the coldest grave of adulthood, and with shuddering sobs had taken her mouth. And she knew, with no doubt, that it could have been anyone. Any person to show that compassionate worry could have had their lips claimed so desperately by this delicate barbwire. She had no delusions of her importance.

Star had thought with careful handling she could untangle the line without getting pricked, that if she looked hard enough she would have found at the center of the thorny mass was something worthwhile, something worthy of such defenses as had been erected to protect it. She hadn't counted on being ensnared within its rusted webbing.

The lacerations bit deep.

None so deep as this decided goodbye.

Sam stared down at her, she could feel the heated gaze on her back and prayed as tears wet the hand she pillowed her face against that the woman would not break from this second rebuttal. And yet…

Yet she did. She wanted to know her callous release hurt, hurt bad enough to prove that somewhere she had meant something to the strange being she had come to care so much for.

Danny had told her, one day when he had found her without his dear friend, that Sam didn't love her. It hadn't been a mean spirited thing, hadn't been some deranged need to reinstate his territory over a heart he had once kindled a flame with. It was a simple, compassionate observation. One she didn't need, she knew this herself, but had been so grateful that he had concerned himself with her.

"She doesn't care about you Star, she's just using you." Danny giving advice on a bad relationship was almost laughable, especially when he would come to school with bruises and Band-Aids, even if Dash had coinciding injuries of his own. "She doesn't need this right now, she needs to think things over, needs to come to terms with everything."

Danny hadn't understood the depth of her feelings when he had rejected her, or else he would have done it more delicately, less sarcastically. Less Danny. Star wanted to retort, say that he should keep his nose out of it, that he should work on his own flawed love life and butt out of hers.

Lately however, the two men had become less violent, though still intense, still hard headed and argumentative. They had their disagreements, and sometimes it got physical, other times it got _'physical'_, never did it seem like they doubted their love.

Star didn't think Danny would stay in a relationship if he wasn't in love.

Maybe then he would have avoided the tension, the awkward aggression when Dash accompanied him and his friends.

Maybe Sam wouldn't have felt the need to keep her claws in Star, wouldn't insist on hanging out with her when Danny hung with Dash and Kwan and Paulina. Maybe it would have ended in the one kiss, that one caress, that moment of weakness.

Maybe then, the cheerleader would have avoided this psychotic love affair all together.

Sam didn't even say goodbye. Simply slipped on her shoes, pulled on her coat, picked up her bag, and left. Star waited until she heard the sound of her Harley fade before curling completely around herself and sobbing.

Maybe now Sam could find the concentration to sort through her emotions. Maybe now she could come to terms with things. Maybe now she could find a love that loved her back.

And maybe Star could find the same, though she'd wait a while.

Wait, until the burning ache in her chest subsided and she could breathe again.

She pulled blanket to her and breathed, still smelling that intoxicating musk each person held unique to himself or herself. Sam was Goth, even in the oppressive heat of summer, and the padded non leather biker jacket she wore made her perspire on these warm summer nights. Paulina thought it was disgusting.

Star found that because of this, everything she touched held a faint trace of her scent. Even her own body. She smelled her on her couch, her cloths, her skin. She was everywhere. Tomorrow she would throw it all in the wash, the blanket and her night shirt and the couch cushion covers. Tonight however, she would take in the smell on last time.

Sam had never slept with her, had never stayed the night after their little dance. Tonight she was supposed to do that, sleep in that bed down the hall until the morning sun filtered through her window and found them entangled in each other. Perhaps it would inspire a more intimate relationship, maybe Star would have held her not just once, but again and again until they were too exhausted to continue. Maybe in their dreams they would have reached for each other, maybe Sam would have found she could have that physical contact she now needed so desperately.

Nevertheless, Danny had been right. Sam didn't love her.

She had told him that day she didn't care, that it was casual on both sides, but he had given her a look, one that said he didn't believe her. Nobody believed her.

They all knew Sam didn't really want her, and also that Star, oh so desperately, wanted Sam.

She wondered if Sam knew that too, or if she had bought that offhanded farewell.

Wrapped in the soft blanket that smelled like someone she wasn't quite ready to forget she picked herself up off the floor and shambled down the hallway towards her room.

At the very least she could always dream.

She felt stronger when she lay down alone in her bed. She had thought she'd feel miserable, alone, sad, but she had freed herself from the barbwire before it had enveloped her completely. She wondered if she should regret fleeing from the glimpse of the gem likely hidden in the center of that prickly cavern, and decided a life trapped in a thorny cell, even with whatever treasure Sam would have become, was not worth the price of her happiness.

She wondered if Danny felt that way when he and Dash fought. If a gentle, compatible relationship, a healthy relationship, was not worth the price of the overwhelming chemistry they shared.

She wanted that for herself.

She just wished she could have had it with Sam.

-

Cut a scene up there on the couch, figured you people may not want my first post with them to feature such…graphic material. Regardless, I'll begin posting some of my femslash now, since I'm getting rather bored with the offerings other writers provide. I haven't read a good lesbian love story in ages (That wasn't Kim/Shego) and it still peeves me that nobody does this couple. Almost as much as it peeves me that nobody else ships Peter/Flash.

By the way, almost done with the next chapter to Photo opportunities, and guess what's also getting an update?

Most Haunted Story.

-Rin


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